C4SS Feed 44 presents Chad Nelson‘s “Capitalism Smothers the Sharing Economy” read by Mike Gogulski and edited by Nick Ford. FAR’s efforts, like those being carried out by taxicab oligopolies in Germany, Australia, France, the US and elsewhere, show us how quickly so-called private enterprise jumps on any deviation from the current capitalist structure. That’s…

Cass Sunstein is such an excellent, if unintentional, parody of liberal goo-gooism that it’s hard to tell him from a creation of The Onion. As proof that “our democratic system structures” are not rigged — whatever Gloomy Guses like Elizabeth Warren and Lawrence Lessig may think — Sunstein (“The American System Isn’t Rigged,” BloombergView, August…

, … We on the Libertarian Left consider it utterly perverse that free market libertarianism, a doctrine which had its origins as an attack on the economic privilege of landlords and merchants, should ever have been coopted in defense of the entrenched power of the plutocracy and big business. The use of the “free market”…

Contrary to mainstream classical political economy, which treated the “original accumulation of capital” as the result of thrift, saving and reinvestment on the part of the capitalist, Marx argued in the first volume of Capital that capitalism — as opposed to simple market exchange — was founded on the separation of the peasantry from their…

Russia may have finally caught up with the rest of the world’s governments in cracking down on ridesharing services like Uber. Russia’s Federation of Car Owners (FAR), like any good oligarchy, has complained to Russian state authorities that “rogue” elements such as Uber, Gett, and Yandex represent a “threat to society.” Exactly what kind of…

At the Washington Post, Max Ehrenfreund argues (“Hillary Clinton’s top goal as president could be effectively impossible to achieve,” July 20) that Hillary Clinton may be hampered in her stated goal of raising middle class incomes and reducing economic inequality by factors beyond her control. These factors include forces such as “technological automation and globalization,”…

To the people of Greece. We at Center for a Stateless Society extend our sympathies for your recent disappointment from the Syriza government’s acceptance of the austerity regime imposed on you by the European Union. Unfortunately, movements that focus on capturing the state as the primary axis of struggle find themselves, not only not empowered,…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Nick Ford‘s “GM Deeres to be Stupid” read by Mike Godzina and edited by Nick Ford. GM, Deere and other similar companies who rely on IP for their profits continue to be some of the best examples of how capitalism goes against the forces of freed markets. It creates artificial enclosure…

Many thanks to the more than helpful edits of Kyler Dineen and Mike Moceri The “Left” in Left-Libertarian The goal of this paper isn’t to convince anyone of the benefits of anarchism or to convince anyone that they should be a left-libertarian. Instead, I’d like to help deepen our understanding of what the position entails and…

Dmytri Kleiner. The Telekommunist Manifesto. Network Notebook Series (Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2010). Kleiner starts with a materialist analysis of class relations quite similar to Marx’s. Through their access to the wealth that results from the continuous capture of surplus value, capitalists offer each generation of innovators a chance to become a junior partner…

On July 2nd, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed, officially breaking ties between the American colonies and the British empire. It is the idealism behind this document and American independence that folks across the United States will celebrate this 4th of July. The 4th is the central holiday of the summer season and liberty is…

We live in a time of precipitous biodiversity loss, on course to yield the sixth great extinction. In such a time there should be high priority placed on protecting biodiversity. Instead of curbing habitat loss, the leading cause of extinction, however, the Chinese government actively pursues it. In the rich bioregion of central China, home to numerous species of endemic…

In my last two blog posts, I responded to Lynn Stuart Parramore’s article titled How Piketty’s Bombshell Book Blew Up Libertarian Fantasies. At the end of the second one, I promised an explanation of the economic theory I used to critique her article. This post will be a brief introduction to said economic theory. Let’s…